After 16 years working in charities I never would have thought I would
ever hear the words "fundraising made easy". As anyone in the charity
and not for profit sector will tell you, fundraising is a lot of things but
easy, it is not.
So how did I find the easy way, well I left the charity sector for
the corporate sector and here is where I found a company wanting to help
charities. This wasn't a one off sponsorship for a tax reduction, or a gift of
over stocked product, or even a well hearted person who wanted to do some good.
This was a company who had thought about how they could help charities to
help themselves to raise more funds continuously, with no strings attached.
Ok so what am I talking about? We have all heard about online giving,
sites like "Give a Little, Local Hero or Go fund me" I have even tried
some of these sites myself. I've set up a fundraising page and shared it and
waited for the money to roll in. Well we got some money which is great, there
really are some generous people out there but we didn't get a lot of
donations. Sound familiar?
These sites work best when you apply the peer to peer fundraising philosophy. According
to John Haydon, a well-known FB marketing consultant, Haydon describes it like
this. Peer-to-peer fundraising is based on a two-way
relationship. Traditional fundraising appeals are often one-sided, broadcast messages.
These promotions can move people to act, but they don’t easily capture the
emotion or relationship that can drive giving on a massive scale. Social
fundraising puts the message in the mouth of the person who is most likely to
prompt a donation: someone the audience knows.
The experience of supporting a good cause becomes one
that people can have together, which makes it even more powerful. Peer to peer
fundraising sites makes it incredibly easy to raise money online for the things
that matter to you most. In minutes, you are able to personalise your
fundraising campaign and share it with your networks and the networks of your
peers.
So ok Haydon, its people driving people to donate I
get that but it can’t be that easy right? Even I was sceptical even after they
showed me all the data to back up their claims. And I won’t lie to you, you do
have to work at it to make it work, nothing can really be that easy.
How much work is involved and how easy is it
really?
So I wanted to test this new company Ticketsuite
out. A peer to peer fundraising site and event management site in one. Think of
it like this, Give a little and Ticketbrite in one. A one stop shop. On this site I was able to sell tickets to an
event and have champion’s fundraisings for me too.
The event was for CanTeen, Fight Night. A Gala
Dinner with a boxing ring in the middle. Now anyone who knows me, knows I hate
boxing but this is an annual event they do, it’s for a good cause, so you get
over yourself and do the job anyway. So for those who don’t know how this event
works, we had 20 fighters (all amateur volunteers) and a couple of celebrities
to bring in the punters. Each fighter has to sell a table which were set at
$3000 and set up a fundraising page and bring in as many donations as they can. We actually started with 40 volunteer fighters but 20
pulled out because of injury, other commitments, fear or whatever reason. With 40 we set the fundraising goal at
$35K. When we were left with just 20 I said leave our target and even
if we only make half we will be happy.
Our volunteers came from various backgrounds and lived
all over Auckland, we really didn’t know how we would do. We raised $34,890.00.
We sold 37 tables to the event and with TicketSuite we could download an app on
our phone so we could scan the tickets when people arrived.
Now running this event was not easy, it’s a lot of
work, we hosted it at the Cloud, so we had to pack in everything. But the
fundraising, other than a training day and an email now and then to provide
tips on peer to peer fundraising. This was totally driven by our champions. It
became a competition and in the last week we were sitting at 20K which we were
very happy with and it jumped $15k in the last few days because they were all
competing, driving it hard, on their FB pages.
Ok still sceptical? I know what you're thinking, "but it is CanTeen, young people
living with cancer, you would have to be a cold hearted soul not to care" right? How can this help other causes that aren’t as well known? Well, like John Haydon said “Giving is also social in that we are strongly influenced by our family, friends, and networks—as well as those we perceive to be our peers. When an appeal for funds comes from someone in our networks that we trust, we’re more likely to act”.
Its not about the cause necessarily, its about the people who care about your cause, its your champions who make fundraising easy.
So why TicketSuite?
Well it has no set up fees, no membership fees, in fact there is no cost to you at all. All these sites make money by taking a percentage per transaction from a ticket sale or donation. TicketSuite has the best value online. Beginning with an option to start at1.5% fee per transaction, that's as little as .30cents for every $20 you raise, because as they say “We help those to help others with event management and fundraising made easy” If you want to know more visit www.ticketsuite.co.nz
So why TicketSuite?
Well it has no set up fees, no membership fees, in fact there is no cost to you at all. All these sites make money by taking a percentage per transaction from a ticket sale or donation. TicketSuite has the best value online. Beginning with an option to start at1.5% fee per transaction, that's as little as .30cents for every $20 you raise, because as they say “We help those to help others with event management and fundraising made easy” If you want to know more visit www.ticketsuite.co.nz
